


Not Good Enough

by Helholden



Category: Da Vinci's Demons
Genre: F/M, Incest, Love/Hate, Obsession, Power Dynamics, Power Imbalance, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-09 01:45:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1964250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helholden/pseuds/Helholden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You have someone to love. You need someone to hate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Good Enough

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's Notes:** An extended version of the flashback from 2x04. I've been getting some strange power dynamics between these two, and Riario feels just a little . . . _too_ enthusiastic about hurting Lucrezia when he seemed more interested in helping her at first. I found it very interesting to explore that in a twisted sort of way here.

* * *

 

The cracked paint on the wooden beams gave the place a quaint décor in the cast of the golden sun, whose light fell from the open windows in bright rays against faded blue walls. They were old and weathered by time’s arduous hands, though well-tended over the years to not fall into further decay. The light fell upon old candelabras on the far wall covered with dust, the chipped fawn-colored paint of each wooden frame around them, and the dead body of his cousin, Amelia, lying at his feet.

 

He had squatted on the ground beside her as Lucrezia fell to her knees to drape herself over her little sister’s lifeless vessel. There was a pain in his chest as well, one he would never voice aloud, for that would be weakness, but Riario felt it as sure as Lucrezia had cried out in anguish. Amelia was an innocent. He had tried to spare her life, but no one had lived under his father’s rule longer than himself, and Riario knew the cost better than most.

 

He watched as Lucrezia’s hand softly stroked through Amelia’s hair and wished, once more, that he had possessed the power to save her.

 

Lucrezia would blame him now as much as she blamed his father for twisting the little girl’s neck, though his hands were clean of it—or were they? He had helped his father with this plan. He had helped kill the guards, too. He had gone along with every detail of it. The blood was as much on him as it was on his father.

 

He had not known Amelia, even though she was family. He hardly felt affection for her, but there were some things he could not stomach. Some things he could not do that his father was capable of. Some things that were better left for crueler hands than his, though he was learning his were turning harder every day.

 

Amelia had been only a child, though, as well as his cousin. She could have been spared. She could have been useful. Riario could have taught her subterfuge at a young age. He could have groomed her as a master spy, but it seemed his father had other plans, and those plans did not include Amelia in them.

 

The modicum of trust Riario had hoped to build between Lucrezia, Amelia, and himself was gone like a whiff of smoke from a doused fire, curling up and out of his fingers as soon as he had reached out to grasp it.

 

As he watched her weep over her dead sister, he could only manage three words.

 

“I tried, cousin.”

 

His voice shook slightly as he said them, but the words were not good enough for today. Lucrezia gazed up at him, horror in her eyes as if he had proclaimed himself God incarnate before her, and she spat in his face. Riario closed his eyes, blinking only, as the spittle ran down the bridge of his nose. He did not strike her back. He had no wish to cause her further harm.

 

Not yet, anyway.

 

Riario raised his eyes to Lucrezia’s once more, seeing the lost chance fleeing from his grasp. He had seen her from afar, had, in some unnatural way, desired her. She was beautiful. He had known that from the moment he laid eyes upon her. Unholy as it was, it would not be his first sin. He had committed many, and it paled in comparison to others.

 

Some naïve part of his mind had hoped to win her, but it was an absurd concept now.

 

Perhaps it was her beauty paired with her innocence that had won him. He was envious of that innocence. So envious of it, that if he could not have it himself or could not have her, then he would break it.

 

He would bring her down with him.

 

“Your story will be simple,” Riario began, feeling his heart pound hard with each word. He could feel his lips tremble. He could feel each quaver of his nerves as he spoke the words that were so hard to say. “There was a struggle. Bandits took your sister’s life. If you breathe a word of this to your adopted family, they will suffer the same fate.” He rose from the floor. “You are Rome’s chattel now.”

 

He walked away from Lucrezia, telling himself not to look back.

 

It was not an order so easily followed, though.

 

Riario turned around to look at her once last time. Lucrezia was still kneeling on the floor beside her sister’s body, her hand still on the girl. Riario met her eyes, and saw steel beneath them despite her grief.

 

“Further instructions will be forthcoming,” he informed her quietly, though it didn’t sound like his own voice speaking.

 

It sounded like his father’s.

 

He waited to see if there would be an answer, but Lucrezia was silent instead. In his own shock he lowered his eyes to the floor and backed away from her until he turned on his heels and headed for the door.

 

She called out to him.

 

“I will die first.”

 

Riario stopped. Slowly, he turned back around. Death. He had not expected that one, not with her father still alive. Her sister might have been dead, but she still had her father to live for. He was silent at first.

 

“How?” he finally asked, and Lucrezia looked to her left. Darting away from her sister, she scrambled across the floor to one of the fallen guards.

 

Riario knew immediately, and dashed toward her. He seized her hand just as she raised a dagger from the guard’s belt, but he could not move out of the way fast enough. The dagger nicked him across the cheek, drawing blood on its needle fine point. He struggled to get it away from her, pinning her arm until she let go of the blade and dropped it.

 

It clattered to the floor from her open fingers, useless.

 

“That was a foolish move, cousin,” he breathed near her ear. She was pinned in his arms with her back against his chest, his weight half on top of her.

 

“You cannot stop me a second time,” she hissed.

 

“I could,” Riario told her softly. “I could have you chained up like the chattel you are. Would that not suffice?”

 

Lucrezia trembled in his embrace until her struggle fell weak at last. She drew in ragged, heaving breaths, silent against him. Slowly, Riario moved her arm to pin both of them down using only one of his hands. He was still mindful of the blade on the floor beside them. He raised his hand to her face, feeling the tears as they fell on his flesh. Warm tears, cold skin.

 

“I was innocent once, too, dear cousin,” he said. “As innocent as you are now, but will not be for long. I lost that a long time ago, and so will you. My father, his reign is a cruel one. You will learn that some enough, and you will obey. If you know what is good for your father, you will do as I say. You do not wish for me to punish him on behalf of your misbehavior, do you?”

 

She was silent at first. “No,” Lucrezia finally answered him through her tears.

 

“Good,” Riario murmured. “We are at an understanding.”

 

Slowly, he let her go. Riario rose to his feet, picking up the dagger. He slipped it into his own belt. Lucrezia was still on the ground. He extended his hand to her.

 

She stared at it, and then looked up at him, warring in her head over which path to choose, which way to react.

 

“Take my hand,” he instructed.

 

He did not have to. He did not have to help her at all. He could have let Lucrezia crawl to her feet for the newest position they had bestowed upon her, but it was not that simple in the end. Riario had wanted to spare Lucrezia. He had wanted to spare Amelia, too, but now his plan was no more than a threadbare version of the original one he had had in mind.

 

Lucrezia looked up at him with watering eyes, so innocent, so large and full of life, and Riario wondered when he had last looked like that himself.

 

Too many years, he knew.

 

He saw it then, an inkling of a promise in her eyes. Her innocence, which drew him to her so, brought him to his knees.

 

“My dear Lucrezia,” Riario heard himself say, his voice sounding faraway to his own ears as he stepped closer to her, “do take my hand. Put away these foolish advances, and I will see to it that your new life is as comfortable as I can make it. This I promise you. You can be assured of that.” His hand was extended between them in the open space, her kneeling figure, his standing silhouette. “For the love that lies between us, cousin.”

 

It was the wrong thing to say.

 

Lucrezia spat at his hand, swatting it as she backed away from him. “You don’t know the _meaning_ of the word,” she accused of him.

 

He had tried. He did.

 

Riario snatched her wrist, gripping tightly. Turning around, he dragged her from the room. She screamed and wailed behind him as she tried to stop him, tried to raise herself from the floor, but her legs scraped against the unforgiving splinters in the old wood and her hands were bloody with them by the time he had gotten them to the front gate.

 

 _If she is going to act like a dog, then I will treat her like one_. It was an angry thought to himself, and he could feel his lips were tight, his face tight, skin white with the tension in his jaw. His heart was pounding painfully within his ribcage.

 

He ordered her to be trussed up and put on the back of a horse.

 

All the while, he tried to ignore the dull ache inside of his heart, but it only made him feel worse.

 

There were worse sins in the world than wanting, though. Worse sins than a love not reciprocated. Worse sins, even, than wanting her. She was a woman of his own blood, of kinship to him, he knew, but he loved her all the same. He did. He could feel it in his bones, paining him with the very incurrence of its memory.

 

 _She hates me_.

 

Riario looked over his shoulder to see her being guided away.

 

 _Let me be guilty of those_ , he thought bitterly, as he shook the reins on his horse and hollered out the orders to his men. They rode off into a cloud of dirt kicked up by hoof beats.

 

He never once looked back at her again.

 

 


End file.
